


Not Cruel

by relcutantlyback (AzaWhite)



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Gen, Mari Loves Her Brother, Missing Scene, Smoking, mari is a badass
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-15
Updated: 2019-05-15
Packaged: 2020-03-05 22:55:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18838462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AzaWhite/pseuds/relcutantlyback
Summary: Yuri may be an angry, loudmouth, speak-his-mind teenager, but he isn't cruel.





	Not Cruel

                Yuri stumbles into the room entirely by accident. It’s late and he’s jet-lagged and he just wants a drink of water. As he slides out of the closet (and yes, it’s quiet because even he knows Victor needs sleep) and tries to tip-toe out of the room, Victor’s dumb mutt perks up and jostles Victor. Despite Yuri’s rotten luck, Victor simply sighs in his sleep and adjusts to hug the dog again. Yuri lets out a breath. Victor stays quiet. A soft little smile starts curling on Victor’s face though, and Yuri nearly gags when he recognizes it as the one he’s reserved for thinking of loser Katsuki.

                As he steps out the door, Yuri gets one last look at his rinkmate’s sleeping face and scowls. Asshole. He starts walking down the hall. Yuri’s cursing stupid, forgetful, impulsive Victor in Russian when he realizes he’s totally lost. Fuck. He wanders a little further and vaguely recognizes the inn’s entrance despite the darkness. He thinks. Maybe he can just snag a drink from the kitchen.

                He makes a left. Then a right. There’s a room with a little flickering light coming out from under the door. He slides it open. His eyes take a second to adjust to the addition of candlelight. And when he blinks, he sees something that definitely isn’t a kitchen.

                It’s some sort of shrine. (He vaguely remembers that it’s traditional in Japanese culture to make a shrine to deceased family members from an online course. Yakov had made him take it before allowing him to attend Worlds. Apparently, Yuri needs to work on his ‘cultural sensitivity.’)

                (He thinks Yakov is full of shit.)

                Yuri walks a little closer, throat still dry, morbid curiosity getting the best of him. He’s not fucking scared of ghosts. The candle’s flame flutters. Shadows obscure most of what’s on the altar, but Yuri can clearly see a picture of Katsuki as a chubby kid with his arms around…a brown fuzzy thing. He squints. Oh. The fuzzy thing is a dog.

                The wind outside blows and the shadows dance, and a glint of metal catches Yuri’s attention. He glances down. It’s a dog tag. He reaches out—

                “You going to tell me why you’re creeping around my brother’s dog’s shrine?”

                “AGH!” He whirls around. Mari is leaning against the sliding door he’d opened to get in, unlit cigarette dangling from her fingers. The shadows cover most of her face, leaving her eyes to glint dangerously.

                “Well?” She brings the cigarette up to her face and lights it. (Where the fuck did she get a lighter?) The flare of the lighter’s flame lights up her impassive face for a brief instant before plunging it back into darkness. It’s vaguely sinister.

                “Uh…I was thirsty.” Yuri winces internally. Clearly, that isn’t going to cut it. “I…got lost.”

                “Hm.” Mari blows out the smoke, and Yuri barely manages to not flinch. Cigarette smoke stinks, but like hell is he going to let her know it bothers him. She steps forward until she’s just a foot away. The embers from her cigarette are a little too close for comfort. Yuri hisses.

                “Can’t you go pollute the air somewhere else?”

                She ignores him. Instead, she blows out another breath of smoke, and this time Yuri coughs. Mari cracks a wry, too-sharp smile. It’s a sharp contrast from the gushing and nonsense babbling she’d uttered upon meeting him. “Go back to bed. And don’t snoop.” Her words are punctuated by a couple light taps on the cigarette. Ashes fall to the floor, and she grinds on them with her foot.

                Yuri does not intimidate easily, but he skitters back to the door. But when he gets there, Mari’s words come back to him. He turns back. Her silhouette is dark against the pale moonlight and candle. “This is a shrine…for a dog?”

                Mari doesn’t turn. “Yeah. He died the night before the free skate at the Grand Prix.” She blows out more smoke, and it mingles with the light. “He was Yuuri’s—who hadn’t seen him in five years.”

                Yuri’s throat suddenly feels a little drier. He swallows hard. Sure, Katsuki had failed epically and cried in a toilet stall, but maybe…

                Maybe he had a reason.

                Mari sighs. “The kitchen’s to your left. Second door down.” She pauses, briefly. Her voice breaks as she speaks again. “Now leave.”

                Yuri scrambles.

                After he chugs down a glass of water, he tiptoes back to Victor’s room. Once he settles back in the closet, he pulls out his phone and searches for ‘Katsuki Yuuri news’. He doesn’t get many results in English or Russian, but he gets enough to tell him Katsuki basically dropped off the face of the earth after Sochi. There’s a little bit about his failure at Japan’s Nationals, but after that, there’s only a few articles about him returning to Hasetsu.

                Yuri doesn’t sleep well that night.

                (In the morning, once they get to the ice rink, Katsuki begs for Yuri to teach him the quad salchow. Yuri thinks for only a moment. He’ll never apologize in so many words for yelling—that’s for the weak—but he will apologize in his own way.

                He isn’t cruel.)

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! If you like this, please drop some kudos and/or a comment.


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